


open your eyes and see

by flipflop_diva



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/M, Jyn Erso-centric, Last Moments, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, POV Jyn Erso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 19:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13794669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: The moment between life and death leaves a lot of time for reflecting.





	open your eyes and see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morvidra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvidra/gifts).



The one thing Jyn Erso never thought she wanted to be was a hero. She didn’t want to save the world and everyone in it. She didn’t want to have her name known across the galaxy and have children whisper it in awe. If in fact someone had ever told her that was something she could become, she probably would have scoffed. After all, being a hero wasn’t something she aspired to be. It wasn’t even something she thought about.

When she was really young, she just wanted to have her family. She saw children around her, holding hands with a mother and a father both, and she wanted that. She wanted her father home and paying attention to her. She wanted to make him laugh and smile. She wanted her mom to watch her with adoring eyes.

After her mother was killed and her father gone, all she wanted was to do her best for Gerrara. Whether that meant stealing, fighting, scavenging or even killing, she would have done it all for the man who had saved her when she was a child. 

But when he, too, abandoned her, everything changed again. All she wanted then was to survive. To make it through one day and then the one after that. She didn’t desire to help anyone, to make anything better. She just wanted to live.

That’s what she told herself anyway, even when something inside her told her otherwise. The same something that had her once fighting off the attackers of a young child or rescuing another little girl’s tooka-cat from Stormtroopers.

And in the end, the same something that had led her here, to a beach on Scarif, waiting for her world to end.

It was amazing, she thought, how much time there was in the few moments before death to reflect on life. To reflect on how she got here, trying her hardest to finish putting into motion a path her father had started on long ago.

She thought about how her life could have gone if she had never come here. Would she have died years later, alone and imprisoned? Would she have turned her life around some other way? Met Cassian on another planet, made friends, had a family of her own, raised a daughter to be strong and brave and fearless, raised a son who would be willing to march into battle against the Empire?

She had often thought about her death throughout her life. She always thought it would be a relief, a final escape from the pain and the misery. She never thought it would be like this — a sense of calm and peace, knowing she had done what maybe she had always been meant to do, but also a little sad at realizing she would never know how it all turned out.

She had to believe their actions, their sacrifice, their lives would be worth it. That everything they had done would make a difference. To one person, to many people, she didn’t know, but she had to believe it had not all been in vain.

The Empire in control, the people all afraid … this couldn’t be how the Galaxy ended. This couldn’t be the future she would never see.

There were people out there, like they were here today, ready to fight and ready to stand and maybe she and Cassian and everyone else had helped those people in some way. She had to believe they had.

She closed her eyes now, against this rush of thoughts, trying to concentrate on the roar in the distance, in the bright colors she could see even through the backs of her eyelids. She felt Cassian’s strong arms around her, his body enveloping hers.

He was talking. She could feel his whispers against her ear, his voice soft, his breath warm.

She opened her eyes to see him, to really see him.

He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, smiled at her like they had all the time in the world.

“We should have grown old together,” he said, and he didn’t sound sad but more wistful, nostalgic.

She lifted her own hand, placed it over his, held on to him like she imagined she would have done in another life, one where they were just two normal people who met on a very normal day.

“No,” she said quietly, and she realized her voice was firm, not shaking, not even a waver. “We were never meant to grow old.”

Cassian bent his head, placed his forehead against hers. She curled her fingers around his hand.

They had only seconds.

“See you in another world,” she whispered.

And that was how it ended.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
